Yahoo, cornerstone of pre-2000 old web, is bouncing back

7 April 2026

After a long series of mergers and spinouts and an extremely odd moment where it was part of Verizon, Yahoo is once again an independent, privately held company. And it has big properties in sports and finance, and, against all odds, email, where it’s growing with young people. Gen Z loves Yahoo Mail, people. You heard it here first.

If we want a return — at least in part — to the ethos of the so-called “old web”, a period — debatably — spanning the mid-nineties through to the advent of social media, circa 2008 or so, then Yahoo getting back on its feet is surely a prerequisite. It seems strange to think now, twenty-five plus years later, that prior to 2000, Yahoo’s search engine was just about the only player in town.

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technology, trends, web history

Long term, moderate, coffee consumption might lower dementia risk

7 April 2026

Carly Page, writing for The Register:

Researchers from Mass General Brigham tracked more than 130,000 people for over four decades and found that those who regularly consumed moderate amounts of caffeinated coffee or tea had an 18 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who rarely touched the stuff.

The thing is coffee consumption has to be consistent — spread across decades — and in moderation. Two, maybe three, cups per day. But caffeine seems to be the active ingredient, not coffee per se.

Drinkers of teas with higher caffeine levels might also enjoy the same benefits. Matcha, and black tea, are among tea beverages high in caffeine.

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caffeine, coffee, health

Blogosphere: an algorithm free blog post aggregator

6 April 2026

The new (to me at least) aggregator of blog posts aptly and cleverly titled Blogosphere, is the creation of engineer and writer Ramkarthik Krishnamurthy:

But it’s really about something bigger: rebuilding a thriving community of independent writers and thinkers who share their thoughts freely, without waiting for an algorithm to decide who gets to see them.

A list of recent blog posts can also be viewed in a more simple text style format. In addition, both listings of posts have their own RSS feeds.

Blogosphere joins other fine IndieWeb/SmallWeb blog post aggregators including Blogs Are Back, Blogroll Club, Blogroll, Feedle, powRSS, Oceania Web Atlas, and ooh.directory, to name but a few.

Britons social media use declines, but not because they now write blogs

6 April 2026

Data compiled by Ofcom, being the Office of Communications, Britain’s communications regulator, says 49% of adult social media users now post content, compared to 61% in 2024.

The slow down in publishing content cannot, however, be attributed to an IndieWeb/SmallWeb led switch-over to personal websites or blogs. Unfortunately.

Rather, British social media users are concerned old, long forgotten, posts may surface in the future, potentially causing embarrassment, or hamper their employment prospects, should a recruiter view an old post in the wrong context.

Fears the Artemis II heat shield may not be safe

1 April 2026

On the eve of the launch of NASA‘s Artemis II ten-day Moon flyby mission, Maciej Cegłowski warns that the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft and command module, which the crew will use to return to Earth’s surface, is not safe:

In a nutshell, Camarda argues that NASA is demonstrating the same dysfunction that led to the Columbia and Challenger disasters. Faced with an unexpected engineering failure, it has built toy models to convince itself that the conclusion it wants to reach (it’s safe to fly) are supported by evidence. These toy models are not grounded in physics, but because they appear to be quantitative, they create a false sense of security and understanding, an epistemic fig leaf for management to hide behind.

Cegłowski is not alone, and concerns about the re-entry vessel’s heat shield have been widely flagged in recent weeks. At this late stage in proceedings it can only be hoped NASA’s assurances that the heat shield is safe can be taken at face value.

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astronomy, science, space exploration

Australia facing an AI led job ‘wipe out’ that no one is prepared for

1 April 2026

The latest round of redundancies in the tech sector could well be a result of excess hiring in recent years, even though they are being attributed to greater uptake of AI technologies.

Then again, AI may be the precisely why there have been so many job losses. And there could be more, much more, to come.

This is the sentiment being echoed by a number of IT professionals who are working with AI, including Shaon Diwarkar, a Sydney based Australian entrepreneur and software developer.

Diwarkar is the founder, and sole employee, of InboxAPI, an email app for AI agents, which itself makes use of numerous AI agents including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity, to carry out much of the company’s work.

People are saying “adopt AI or die”. If a large number of enterprises can be operated in the same fashion as InboxAPI, I can see why. Companies previously employing half-a-dozen staff, maybe more, could well be able to get by with one person, working in conjunction with several AI agents.

The AI future is now; we all need to start thinking about it.

Stephen Colbert overshadows The Lord of the Rings Shadow of the Past sequel

31 March 2026

A sequel to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, made between 2001 and 2003, is in the works.

Much of the interest in the story to date though has centred on Stephen Colbert, who is to be one of the screenwriters. Colbert will collaborate with Peter McGee, his son, and Philippa Boyens, co-writer of the earlier film trilogy screenplays.

Colbert is presently host of The Late Show, an American TV talk show, but his tenure concludes this May. It is said that participating in writing the screenplay is a dream come true for Colbert.

And while the point has been raised, not quite so much has been said about the source material for the proposed sequel, being several chapters — three to eight — from The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of the three volumes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novel. In other words, the sequel to The Lord of the Rings films will be based on events occurring relatively early in the epic.

The new film, tentatively titled Shadow of the Past, will be set about fourteen years after The Return of the King, the final part of the series. The story will reportedly see several characters recount some of the adventures of the departed Hobbit, Frodo Baggins.

There’s a clever way to contrive a sequel to story, where one doesn’t really exist. But Stephen Colbert is co-writing the screenplay. We shouldn’t be thinking about anything else.

Why though can we not write new stories all together, without the need to rehash and remix, ones that have already been told? Of course we know. The Lord of the Rings, along with the likes of Star Trek, and Star Wars, have captive audiences who can’t get enough of these stories.

The thing is Star Trek and Star Wars are set in large universes (galaxies) where there is latitude — within some degree of reason — for storylines to unfold in numerous directions.

The Lord of the Rings is something else though, and the story seems complete with the existing novels. Even Tolkien was against the idea, having tried to write a sequel himself, but later abandoning the attempt. Why can we not defer to Tolkien’s judgement in this regard?

Over hiring, not AI, behind recent tech industry redundancies

31 March 2026

Julian Fell, Teresa Tan, and Joshua Byrd, writing for writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

“It’s just gravity,” says George Double, a Sydney-based recruiter who has been working with several engineers who were laid off from Block. Block and Atlassian — another company that cited AI as justification for heavy lay-offs — were “bloated”, he says, and needed to downsize regardless of the impacts of AI. Both companies were paying well-above-average salaries for engineers and hired heavily during the COVID years.

Over hiring in recent years, leaving some companies overstaffed, may be the real reason companies including Atlassian, Amazon, and Block, have made large numbers of employees redundant.

Of course, no one wants to admit that, particularly to the workers facing retrenchment. Saying “advances in technology” sounds a whole lot better than “we should never have hired you.”

But then again…

US court finds Meta, Google, failed to warn users of the dangers of their platforms

27 March 2026

Jonathan Vanian, writing for CNBC:

Jurors ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiff, who claimed that Meta and YouTube’s negligence played a “substantial factor” in causing mental health-related harms. Compensatory damages were assessed at $3 million, with Meta on the hook for 70% and YouTube the remaining 30%. Punitive damages amount to an additional $3 million, with $2.1 million to be paid by Meta and $900,000 by YouTube.

Meta — who all up have been fined just over five million dollars (American) — plans to appeal the judgement. Not on account of the speeding ticket size of the fine (for a company with Meta’s capitalisation that is), but because they “respectfully disagree” with the verdict.

A separate Wall Street Journal article (pay wall) suggested the Los Angeles court decision may trigger numerous legal claims against social media companies, potentially presenting them with an existential dilemma.

An existential dilemma? Can anyone else see these organisations going through some of self reckoning, and changing their ways? No, neither can I.

Do you enjoy forty-nine megabytes of extraneous data with your news?

26 March 2026

Shubham Bose found the publishers of some news websites — often reputable outlets — are forcing readers to download, in some cases, an additional forty-nine megabytes of needless scripts and data with their articles. This might explain why some of us need to keep our phones charging (a no-no I know) while reading the news:

When you open a website on your phone, it’s like participating in a high-frequency financial trading market. That heat you feel on the back of your phone? The sudden whirring of fans on your laptop? Contributing to that plus battery usage are a combination of these tiny scripts.

We need a browser with an all-scripts kill switch, such as the Quiche Browser (presently for iPhone only), which has the option to include a JavaScript (JS) kill switch on its tool bar.

Sure, we can sift through our browser settings and disable JS, but a one click button, on the interface, is a more elegant solution. Kill switches shouldn’t stop at JS though, give us more. How about AI slop, and auto-play video, for starters.

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